What Does Aesop Have To Do With Amherst College?

Several months ago this was a Hot Topic and I wrote a Blog Posting about it but then lost it in my “New In Process” folder.

 

Don’t worry it will be a Hot Topic again. It will raise its ugly head again. Silliness has nine lives.

 

Here is what I pecked out in November 2015...

 

Amherst College is exploding with nonnegotiable demands from a student group that the president apologize for (among others things) Amherst’s “institutional legacy of white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/ indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism.”

If you so not-up-to-date (as I was before I looked it up) that you think the above use of the word “Latinx” is misspelled, allow me to save you the trouble of looking it up. It means, “Latinx (pronounced “La-TEEN-ex”) is a gender-inclusive way of referring to people of Latin American descent”.

 

If you are still confused, click here and read all about it: http://www.complex.com/life/2016/04/latinx/

 

Remember the Aesop’s Fable the Boy Who Cried Wolf? (Wikipedia)...

The tale concerns a shepherd boy who repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock. When one actually does appear and the boy again calls for help, the villagers believe that it is another false alarm and the sheep are eaten by the wolf.

 

This is from my, It Could Be Worse Department. In the English Version of the Aesop’s Fable, the wolf also eats the boy.

 

If you think the above student group’s list is too long, remember the part that reads “(among other things)”. The list will expand. In the meantime, let us spend our time trying to figure out what those ism’s are all about.

 

To get you started on your road to understanding, I looked one up for you...

Ableism is discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities.

I don’t mean to be picky but you know I am... Should that not be Disableism?

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe: I don’t know what Amherst College is exploring (see first paragraph). The demands have officially been declared “nonnegotiable” by the Demanders. The College ought to just give into their demands and then hit the students with a pop Quiz about Dimwitism.

Are We Evil Because We Are Free?

I read recently an editorial page in one of our major newspapers that said we can’t go around imposing freedom on other countries.

I understand that we can’t go around the world and make people free at the point of a gun. We certainly cannot accomplish such a Herculean Task in the near future because Football Season is about to start.

OK, so we can’t Impose Freedom but are we not allowed to say anything at all about what we deem to be Wrong, Evil, Improper or Not Nice?...

Ø What if a country has always made it a practice to deport people with spaces between their front teeth? Are we allowed to even ask, “Why do you do that?”

Ø What if a country has a dictator that takes all of the taxes paid in his country and puts it into a Swiss Bank Account for his retirement? Are we allowed to point out that our rulers do not do this?...Or do they?

Ø What if a country’s dictator wants to take over Kazantzakis because it is so hard to spell? Are we allowed to point out that the emergence of Google makes Spelling Difficulty no longer a valid reason to conquer a country?

Why am I being so silly? I guess I just find it difficult to believe “imposing” and “freedom” are mentioned in the same sentence.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Why Are Their Eyes So Big? Why Are They Talking So Fast?

There was a time when News Shows would introduce their panel of Talking Heads and there would be only 2 Talking Heads on the panel talking their heads. The current political season seems to have promulgated Talking Head Panel Inflation...

My heavens! That’s 9 Talking Heads each vying for a precious few moments to convey to us (the breathless folks back home) their Sage Bits of Wisdom.

 

I intentionally said “bits” because that’s all the show has time for them to spew out before it’s the next head’s turn or that next Hard Break (that’s what they call a commercial).

 

All of them talk very fast and their eyes get wide as they speak. I once thought this was because they were bursting with information but now realize they are frantic to get out what they want to say (or have been told to say) before they lose their turn or the next Hard Break arrives.

 

It could be worse. The show is the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer & Wolfie is not at the Talking Table.

 

I just put on my See Into The Future Hat & here is what I see...

Ø The Talking Tables of the future will expand to the point where there will be hundreds of Talking Heads at the Talking Tables.

Ø Initially they will be limited to a single sentence but over time that will be whittled down to a single word.

Ø There will be red lights in front of each Head and, if he dares say more than 1 word, the light will come on, a buzzer will sound and his mike will be cut off.

Ø Over time the single words that are spoken will be computerized, tabulated, analyzed and conclusions will be drawn as to what they are trying to tell us.

Ø In the Good Ole USofA we are not allowed to disagree with computer analysis, therefore, we do not flinch when we are told something like, “The Talking Heads (who we all look to for guidance) have been telling us for years that we all ought to Eat More Purple Colored Foods Using Chop Sticks”.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe: Gone forever are the days when there were only 2 Talking Heads...

If you are not old enough to remember, allow me to remember for you. The above calm, cool and collected guys are Huntley and Brinkley of NBC News and, when they talked the news at us, their Eyes Did Not Get Big and they never Talked Faster Than Our Ears Could Hear.

General Sherman Said This About The Possibility Of Becoming President Of The United States...If Nominated, I Will Not Run. If Elected, I Will Not Serve!

Strange things are happenings outside Acme Widgets, Inc...There is a guy walking up and down in front of Acme Widgets with a sign that says, “Henry Deserves the Raise! Give the Raise To Henry!”

A reporter from the Daily Planet walks up to the guy with the sign and asks if he is Henry and he replies he is not.

The reporter presses on, “If you are not Henry, who is Henry?”

The Sign Carrier tells the reporter to look through the window of Acme Widgets and goes on to explain to the Reporter, “You see the guy on his knees with his hands folded pleading with the Mr. Acme? That’s Henry. He is pleading with Mr. Acme to not give him the raise”.

The reporter is very confused, so he presses on, “Why do neither of you want a raise in your salary?

The Sign Carrier looks at the reporter as if he is the most out of touch person on Earth and says, “Where have you been? I make $120,000 a year. Mr. Acme wants to give me a promotion and a $10,000 annual increase in salary. Have you not heard that President Hillary is giving any person making less than $125,000 a free college education for all their children? I have 5 children. Do the Math, son! Don’t you know how much money that is?”

General Sherman’s comments updated to the 21^st Century...

If you try and give me a raise, I will not accept it! If you succeed in direct depositing it into my account, I will quit!

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe: Don’t worry about where all that money is going to come from. That’s why we invented China.

Here I Go Noticing Again

This is what caught my eye...

FaceBook star killed by brother for honor in Pakistan

Here are excerpts from the article where I noticed what I noticed...

A Pakistani social media celebrity whose selfies polarized the deeply conservative Muslim country has been murdered by her brother in a suspected honor killing.

 

Qandeel Baloch was strangled to death. Her family confirmed to police that her brother killed her.

 

Hundreds of women are murdered for "honor" every year in Pakistan.

 

The killers overwhelmingly walk free because of a law that allows the family of the victim to forgive the murderer and often the murderer is also a relative.

 

If you want to create a blog & take on Honor Killings, have at it. There is certainly a lot there to blog about but, as for me, I am fixated on the term used in the headline of the article... “Facebook Star”.

 

I can’t get my mind around (whatever that means) “Facebook Star”. How does one get to be a “star” on Facebook? After you get to be a “star” on Facebook what have you accomplished?…

Ø Do you get a Star on the sidewalk outside Mark Zuckerberg’s House?

Ø If Hollywood Stars were still on TV, would you get invited?

Ø Is your family pleased as punch for you?

Ø Do you get invited to the White House?

 

It was reported that a major earthquake just struck the Los Angeles Area but these reports have proven to be unfounded. It was actually Clark Gable, Charlton Heston, Betty Davis, Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe and a whole bunch of Stars (without the quotation marks) turning over in their collective graves.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe: I knew we were in trouble when I heard that Ivy League Student respond to the question, “What is the last book you read?” with the answer, “FaceBook”.

I Know What’s Wrong With The Supreme Court And It’s Not What You Think I Know...Or Is It?

There you go trying to read my mind. Now you are being Foolishness. I have trouble knowing my own mind and, if you think you can read what I don’t know about my mind, you are really confused.

Despite the above opening paragraph, I am going to proceed with this Blog Posting anyway.

You think I think that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is suffering from Dementia, right. That is a possibility but I’m not going to go there. I’m going to go here...

New England Quarterback Tom Brady Is Thinking About Taking His DeflateGate 4 Game Suspension To The Supreme Court Of The United States.

The Smartfella has this to say about that...Huh? With all the Really Big Catastrophic Happenings in the Good Ole USofA, the Supreme Court might get involved in this Mole Hill Issue...Huh? (That’s 2 “...Huh?’s” in one paragraph. I don’t do that very often.)

 

However, this Silliness did peak my interest. I got out my Potted Plant Outfit and headed for Washington, D.C. It was amazing how easily I got into the inner chambers of the Supreme Court. I just hopped right through all their Radar Detectors with no trouble while all those security guards were feverously frisking everything in sight.

 

What I heard in there was Disheartening, Disconcerting and Downright Silly. I found myself thinking, “If this is what these people do in their Secret Deliberations, it’s no wonder their Secret Deliberations are Secret”.

 

Here’s the gist of what the Robes were saying to themselves...

OK, this could be big! Really big! (I looked around for William Shatner but, unless he was dressed up as a Potted Plant, he was not there.)  

What do we have on our plate? All we have before us is Taking Away Freedom of Speech, Abortion Rights, Protection of the Right of People To Blow Up Other People and that 2^nd Amendment Thingy about the People’s Right To Bear Arms.  

Before we proceed, will one of you wake up Ruth?

Yea, we all agree that these are pretty heavy issues but, come on guys and gals, this is Tom Brady! This is about Football! This is Important!

One day you may get me to concede that I do not have a Potted Plant Outfit but you will never get me to believe that, if I did have a Potted Plant Outfit, I would have heard this kind of Foolishness in those Sacred Secret Chambers.

 

It really does not matter whether or not I have a Potted Plant Outfit because I can always fall back on my Fly On The Wall Getup.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe: I just heard where Tom Brady has decided to not take his 4 Game Suspension to the Supreme Court. Looks like The Robe People have dodged another bullet.

I May Be Changing The World

I probably exaggerated by using the title above. The World Changing Part is the Exaggerated Part. The truth is I appear to only be changing my Local Newspaper.

Are you interested enough to read on? Are you confused enough to read on? I’ll accept interested or confused as you reason for reading on. I’m not picky.

I can see you are wondering why I think I am having an effect on my Local Newspaper. It’s because I have been known to make things up in my blog and my local Newspaper appears to be following my lead.

 

Here is a Bullet Point Summation of the article in my Local Newspaper that has me pecking out this Foolishness & has you wondering why I am pecking out this Foolishness...

Ø Local Police have arrested a Local Indecent Exposure Man.

Ø Our Local Indecent Exposure Man has showed his Indecent Parts 6 times since early June.

Ø He has been seen driving 2 different vehicles but none of the victims have been able to provide a tag number because they tended to be exercising without their cell-phones.

 

Do you see where my Local Newspaper tried to be like me by making things up? What you say you don’t?! I continue to be disappointed in you, my Dear Readers. I have tried to hone your Noticing Skills but here you go again failing to live up to my example!

As the above picture will testify women Do Not Exercise without their phones.

 

As I was trying to keep my heart from attacking me at my local high school track recently, I watched this lady go round and round more times than I could count and all the time she was talking on her cell phone.

 

I am prone to believe that, if she called and there was no one out there to talk to, she would have held the phone to her ear anyway. If she was asked why she held the phone there when there was no one to talk to, she would probably have looked at the questioner as if he were stupid and said, “That’s where it belongs!”

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe: It is hard to comprehend that there was a time when we remembered license plate numbers of bad people we encountered. Now we have come to the point where, if we don’t have our phone to take a picture of the license plate, we don’t bother trying. That’s just asking too much!

There Is So Much Money Out There It Has Lost Its Value…Or has it?

• In 1968 the Wimbledon Total Purse was 26,150 Pounds.
• This year’s Wimbledon Total Purse is 28,100,000 Pounds ($41,050,000).

You think that is amazing, look at the picture below. It is astounding that the second place guy is not bursting out laughing at his little trophy. (If you can’t see his trophy, magnify the picture.)

I’m not saying this is a picture of the Wimbledon winners but it must have been pretty big tournament because the winner with the larger trophy looks like Rod Laver.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

(You can’t say I don’t give you a variety of Foolishness to look at.)

What Would We Do Without Wal-Mart?

Wal-Mart To The Rescue!

I know many of you have one or more Pink Flamingo’s in your front yards & most likely have been hit hard by the Flamingo Flu (probably planted in the Good Ole USofA by ISIS). Below is a picture of the devastation caused by the Flamingo Flu in South Florida. It is an awful site to behold!

 

It has been reported that the ones that are more white than pink suffered the most.

 

We have all come to depend on Wal-Mart &, once again Wal-Mart has come through for us. Rush down to your local Wal-Mart today & get your Pink Flamingo Replacement before they are all gone.

 

Wal-Mart has guaranteed that they are Flamingo Flu Proof but is non-committal about their susceptibility to Athlete’s or Trench Foot.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

I Did Not Plagiarize This Article...Or Did I Not?

I am not taking credit for the well written quoted words below. I thought about gathering up the thoughts contained & saying it in my own way but I decided against it. I will simply give credit to Mr. Philip K. Howard for the well written quoted words &, at the end of this Foolishness, give you the opportunity to again read my well written words from a past Foolishness to show that, almost 8 years ago, I tried to say the same thing.  

And you thought I was just being silly...

“The buildup of federal law since World War II has been massive—about 15-fold. The failure of Congress to adapt old laws to new realities predictably causes public programs to fail in significant ways.

The excessive cost of American health care, for example, is baked into legal mandates that encourage unnecessary care and divert 30% of a health-care dollar to administration. The 1965 law creating Medicare and Medicaid, which mandates fee-for-service reimbursement, has 140,000 reimbursement categories today and requires massive staffing to manage payment for each medical intervention, including giving an aspirin.

In education, compliance requirements keep piling up, diverting school resources to filling out forms and away from teaching students. Almost half the states now have more administrators and support personnel than teachers. One congressional mandate from 1975, to provide special-education services, has mutated into a bureaucratic monster that sops up more than 25% of the total K-12 budget, with little left over for early education or gifted programs.

Why is it so difficult for the U.S. to rebuild its decrepit infrastructure? Because getting permits for a project of any size requires hacking through a jungle of a dozen or more agencies with conflicting legal requirements. Environmental review should take a year, not a decade.

Most laws with budgetary impact eventually become obsolete, but Congress hardly ever reconsiders them. New Deal farm subsidies had outlived their usefulness by 1940 but are still in place, costing taxpayers about $15 billion a year. For any construction project with federal funding, the 1931 Davis-Bacon law sets wages, as matter of law, for every category of worker.

Bringing U.S. law up-to-date would transform our society. Shedding unnecessary subsidies and ineffective regulations would enhance America’s competitiveness. Eliminating unnecessary paperwork and compliance activity would unleash individual initiative for making our schools, hospitals and businesses work better. Getting infrastructure projects going would add more than a million new jobs.

But Congress accepts these old laws as a state of nature. Once Democrats pass a new social program, they take offense at any suggestion to look back, conflating its virtuous purpose with the way it actually works. Republicans don’t talk much about fixing old laws either, except for symbolic votes to repeal Obamacare. Mainly they just try to block new laws and regulations. Statutory overhauls occur so rarely as to be front-page news.”

Here is the link to the entire article quoted above...

http://www.conservativesolutionsproject.com/2016/04/01/the-crippling-hold-of-old-law/

 

Here is my past blog posting on the same subject...

 

There Ought To Be A Federal Law Against Federal Laws
Is it possible to keep track of all the Federal Laws?
November 03, 2008 | 05:05 PM

When members of our 9% Approval Rating Congress run for re-election they always tout in their "accomplishments" all the laws they proposed, sponsored and/or co-signed. They seem very proud when offering these facts up as undeniable evidence that they are deserving of the Public Trust (whatever that is).

The whole process is a mess…

Ø  Members of Congress spend gobs of money traveling to places like France and China in order to gather facts about legislation they propose upon their return. The problem is their legislation has nothing to do with France or China.

Ø  Once a law is passed, it has to be enforced. This requires more bureaucrats. (Bureaucrats … that can certainly be the subject of another Foolishness, Or Is It?).

Ø  Once a law is passed, it has to be kept track of, recorded and disseminated to the folks back home. How in the hell can they keep track of, record and disseminate to the folks back home 1,000 new laws passed every year?

Ø If we were lucky, no one would know of and/or bother with the 1,000 new laws, once passed.

I think that we ought to be smart enough, at this point in our storied history, where we could have legislation in place that would require that two laws must be repealed for each new law passed. If this were to come to pass, in a hundred years or so, we ought to be down to a manageable 10,000 laws (give or take a few). That just might be a workable number.

I am coming around to the point of thinking where the incumbent who can verifiably proclaim in his campaign slogan, "I Did Not Do Anything Since You Sent Me To Congress", is the kind of Do-Nothing that will get my vote in the future.

 

Could it be that I know what I am talking about?

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella